Woohoo! I finally have a reasonable chance of getting a high speed Internet connection — RCN has finally set up my neigborhood to use two way cable modems, at about $40 a month. I want to look into a few things before making a decision, like taxes, and buying my only modem (I understand I can save $5/month), and they have to confirm they can handle (if not support) Linux.

Anyway, on the chance that I do go high speed, I don't want to forget some of the "gotchas" of a low speed Internet connection (in the hopes of keeping WikiLearn, at least, usable for those who continue to have a low speed connection).

Contents

Notes

Subtle Things

"Open new (page / tab)" commands of browsers should leave you on the original page (IE6 (in particular) (I use it at NCACC) does not do this, and I haven't found an option (so far??) to change the behavior (or an alternate like "open in background". The thing is, on a slow speed connection, I usually want to start pages opening in the background before I finish reading the current page (or, on a page with a list of links, I want to start a bunch of them) -- I want to stay on the current page to finish reading or to start other links loading. Maybe on a high speed connection the behavior is tolerablel, but I guess I think it's really wrong there as well.

Obvious Things

Use text, minimize HTML and graphics

Minimize tables and frames also (possibly for slightly different reasons — maybe more to make narrow screen machines more usable)